How can a film about magic have zero sense of wonder for magic? All the tricks are done with hilariously bad CGI, which makes them not tricks. And where’s the showmanship? The four magicians (Isla Fisher, Jesse Eisenberg, Dave Franco, and Woody Harrelson) stand around on stage in heavily edited sequences more concerned with swooping camera angles than any sense of rhythm. Nothing here engages, but the cast works hard to overcome a script that does nothing but continually dig itself out of holes by pointing the camera at characters and having them say things that make the story what it needs to be at that particular moment.

Mark Ruffalo, Mélanie Laurent (“Au revoir, Shoshanna!”), Common (whom the movie forgets about for most of its running time until it needs him for a sight gag), and mighty oaks Michael Caine and Morgan Freeman are all wasted on this; of the magicians, it’s Harrelson’s natural charm that allows him to win the movie despite how poorly his character is written.